Etienne Boulanger was born in Longeville-lès-Metz (France) in 1976 and died in New York (USA) in 2008. He studied at Fine Arts in Nancy (France), and graduated in 2000 ( DNSEP).

Etienne Boulanger’s research is focused on the re-appropriation of transitory zones. He produced cunning and intrusive interventions within the urban environment and also ephemeral installations in art galleries and institutions. As a nomadic artist, he wandered through the cities which are the symbols for the "metropolization" process such as like Berlin, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo or New York. He located gaps, fallow lands, and residual spaces in order to take over the place using a clever masking strategy. His works, set up on site, do not represent nor reproduce objects. The temporary interventions and the clandestine occupation of these places, are meant to cast a critical look on our environment. Through active discretion, he exchanged ideas with the other users of these spaces.

Etienne Boulanger also used a large number of media to keep a record of his work, from location to the eventual results of his actions. He systematically displayed photographs, slides and videos but also photocopies, drawings, plans, maps and other writtings during exhibitions. That documentation came from a methodical yet not too rigid process, and was considered by the artist as an evolutive database, the report of a process, just like cities in perpetual mutation.

SOLO EXHIBITION / INTERVENTIONS

2008
Cracked house, space thinks, Berlin Neukölln (Germany), curated by Birgit Schumacher and Uwe Jonas

2007
The Single Room Hotel, Skulpturen Park, Berlin (Germany)
Contre-formes Ligne A, Interventions on the public sculptures, Orleans (France)
Trans-Location, Castel Coucou, Forbach (France)

2006
Land Blaster, Port Autonome du Rhin, Strasbourg (France)
Beijing Olympic games 04/08, work in progress stage#3, Pekin (China)
Keep the Dust, Galerie Octave Cowbell, Metz (France)

2005
Blind Process, Galerie Interface, Dijon (France)
Beijing Olympic games 04/08, work in progress stage#2, Pekin (China)

2004
Beijing Olympic games 04/08, work in progress stage#1, Pekin (China)
Temporary Archive, rue St Hélène, Strasbourg (France)

2003
Temporary Archive, disused shop Lion frères, C.I.P.A.C., Metz (France)
Berlin, C.C.A.M., Vandoeuvre (France)

2002
Temporary Archive, UIA World congress of architecture, Berlin (Germany)
2001/03 Plug-in Berlin 01/03, work in progress, Berlin (Germany)

GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection)

2008
ISCP Open studios, New York (USA)
La vie moderne revisitée, Centre d’art Contemporain Passerelle, Brest (France)
Frontières, extramural exhibition program frac Bourgogne, La Galerie, Talans (France)
Frontières, extramural exhibition program frac Lorraine, Médiathèque, Forbach (France)
Pierre Labat/ Etienne Boulanger, Galerie de l’Ecole d’Art, Brest (France), curated by Folded Space

2007
Continuum, Espace Paul Wurth, Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Welcome to our Neighbourhood, Stadtgalerie, Saarbrücken (Germany), curated by Corinne Charpentier
Sublimes Objets-Collection sans frontières VI, Frac du Grand-Est, National Museum of Contemporary Art, French institute, Bucarest (Romania)
Kunstpreis Robert Schuman, Stadtmuseum Simeonstift, Trier (Germany)

2005
Dashanzi International Art Festival, France-China Exchange Years, 798, Pékin (China), curated by Bérénice Angrémy
Shots, Centre Culturel Franco-Allemand, Karlsruhe (Germany)
Self Made, Galerie Weisser Elephant, Berlin (Germany), curated by Spunk Seipel

2003
Meeting Point, The Sato Museum of Art, Tokyo (Japan)
Camp, Art planning room Aoyama, Tokyo (Japan)
Etienne Boulanger/Raphael Grisey, Soho in ottakring, Wien (Austria)
Transalternativ, die Kathedrale, Berlin (Germany)

2002
Art en circulation, Le Garage, Nancy (France)
G.U.M., Expo 3000, Berlin (Germany)
www.nomusic.org, on line video
Melting media project III, Acud, Berlin (Germany)

2001
F.R.E.T., Le Garage, Nancy (France)
Mulhouse 001, Parc Expo, Mulhouse (France)



GRANTS / PRICES / RESIDENCIES

2008
Residence at I.S.C.P., New York (USA)

2007
Edward Steichen Award, Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Residence Mixar/Labomedia, Orléans (France)

2005/06
Great East Frac's Residencies, Frac Alsace (France)

2004
Aide à la création, creation grant program, D.R.A.C. Lorraine, French Ministry of Culture (France)

2001
Residence program in Berlin financed by General Council of Moselle (France)
Aide à la création, creation grant program, D.R.A.C. Lorraine, French Ministry of Culture (France)
Défi Jeunes, cultural project grant, French Ministry of Youth and Sports (France)

Etienne Boulanger lives life to the fullest through a noble and arduous artistic practice, giving his all. He has the conviction which gives him the strength to work day after day, from morning to night, his hands in plaster of paris, covered in dust and head held high. The conviction which gives him the courage and the desire to live life dangerously and to the fullest at the four corners of the earth. Shaping his art.
Nancy, Metz, Forbach, Strasbourg, Dijon, Orleans, Brest... Osijek, Vukovar, Zagreb, Tuzla, Sarajevo, Berlin, Beijing, Shangai, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Sarrebruck, Vienna, Tokyo, Karlsruhe, Trier, Bucarest, New York...

Etienne Boulanger constantly fights against the standardization of our lives, he fights against everything being rationalized, against consumerism, against insidious power, against authority. He ardently defends the right to be different, alternative, a rebel, clandestine, and free. On closer examination, Etienne Boulanger optimizes an infinite subversive potential. His works conveyhis acute view of the evolution of society and the benevolent sign that addresses the insignificance of our lives.

His work is based on a tried and tested method, which consists of exploring, observing, elaborating, intervening and sometimes living his work. Rigor, adaptation, and commitment are also involved in the process.

In 2001, after graduating from the Nancy's Fine Arts School, Etienne Boulanger went to Berlin where he stayed for two years. Barely enough time to set up a project hence just as crazy as ambitious : Plug in Berlin.
This project consisted of living in micro-spaces in the urban landscape which were too narrow or too awkward to be used for real estate projects. These unusable areas became free spaces for Etienne Boulanger to take over - pockets of resistance. That's where he actually built shelters which could not be seen from the outside, in which he illegally spent several nights. He lived this way, moving from one shelter to another for more than a year, symbolically taking over these urban spaces. He experiences an urban nomadic lifestyle which did not cut him off from the world, but on the contrary, really took the world on-board, making it his playground.

When he came back to France after this experimental episode, Etienne Boulanger created the display to show the results of his Berlin period: interactive maps, photographs, videos. The steps of his work, which he entitled Temporary archives, are then shown in the city open spaces. He invaded, for few days a storefront in Metz and built one of his ephemeral constructions. That's where he presents his artwork, shares and speaks about it with intelligence and shows to the world the presence of an artist radically committed to his art.

Etienne Boulanger's interest in large urban changes took him to China, in 2004. Four years before the world had its eyes fixed on Beijing, he was exploring the capital of China observing the plans meant to destroy the working-class areas, the surveillance systems of the Olympic Games worksites, and the busy traffic in this city which moves with the current. In China, Etienne Boulanger played the parasite game - disapproval, which didn't aim to stop the irreversible process but rather constrain it on a symbolic level. A gesture. A pile of bricks. A tarpaulin pulled across. Traffic diverted. Or stopped. A neighbourhood cut off. Fortified. Protected.

In 2005, back in France for a few months Etienne Boulanger fully invested himself in several projects, particularly a personal exposition at the Interface Gallery in Dijon. After spending his time exploring large cities and pirating public spaces, he found himself closed up in a Gallery where he was involved in a process of « cancelling space ». For several weeks Etienne Boulanger worked and erected more than thirty meters of walls until the space became mute and blind. Then he methodologically ripped these walls open, pierced through them to create a pathway, and destroyed what others might have seen as a finished piece of work. He design a landscape of ruins.

In 2006, Etienne Boulanger was recovering from a knee injury in spite of still suffering from a knee injury (the result of an accident during his Dijon work). In spite of this, he finished the residence he had started in 2005 with the Frac Alsace and Frac Lorraine. He was then working on borders, on the presence of different types of forces in the Shengen zone, which is supposed to be freed from controls. Then he went back to Beijing for several months.

In 2007, he came back to France, in Orleans, for a residence in Mixar. He built a series of brilliant original and subversive works, which fitted in well with the sculptures which had been officially ordered for the tramway line. He defined his own space by positioning himself in a simple matter.

2007 was also the year of an outstanding project, which he carried out in Berlin : Single Room Hotel. A hotel room which is camouflaged by billboards. A fully equipped 22 square meter 2 star hotel room was built on a wasteland. The German press and television took up the story. Etienne's work really fascinates and surprises. The room was fully booked for the duration of the project.

Because of the abundance and diversity of his young career, in 2007 Etienne Boulanger was awarded the prestigious Edward Steichen Award in Luxembourg. This award took him in 2008 to New York for 6 months, to the ISCP: International Studio and Curatorial Program.
In New York, he relentlessly worked for months on making his first monograph, a catalog of his work. He had the backing of three Regional Contemporary Art Funds: Frac Alsace, Frac Burgundy and Frac Lorraine. The ISCP open studios, which were to take place in New York, would have been a unique opportunity for him to speak over and over again about his work.

Etienne Boulanger's career was at that point, already well on track and full of energy. His life and his art, everything was ahead of him. For us, it was obvious. There was no doubt about it, we had projects, we were ready...